The boy turned an amazed face to her. "Has it gone? What is there, then?"
"It has been turned into nurseries. Would you like to see them?"
Mounting beside her, her nephew assented. "But for what purpose do you need nurseries? I have not seen any baby."
"There is no baby yet," returned Horatia gravely. "But I feel sure that before very long the marchande des choux will bring me one, or perhaps I shall find one under a cabbage in the garden, as you know, Claude, one does find them. So I thought it best to begin getting things ready."
"But certainly," agreed Claude-Edmond with his wisest air. "Though I have been told that it is not the marchande des choux after all..."
"Never mind," interrupted Horatia quickly. "Come in and see how the room is altered. It is ready for the furniture now."
No one would have dreamed that the rooms had once been an armoury. Horatia had followed the new mode of a trellised paper covering not only the walls but the ceiling also, so that the effect, as Madame de Vigerie had remarked, was of a cage of flowers to imprison the angelic visitant. But Horatia intended all the arrangements to be English, and this design, which she had never told her husband, she now found herself confiding to the small French boy who stood drinking in all she said with such serious attentive eyes.
"Nobody knows, Claude. Shall we keep it as our secret? When I was a little girl at home, my bed stood here, as it were, and from it I could see in the morning the birds hopping about in the trees outside—a silver birch it was—and singing, singing..."
Oh, home, home, and the unforgettable memories, bitter and sweet at once, of those early mornings!
"You are not crying, ma tante?" asked Claude-Edmond a little anxiously, as she stopped.